"Hilarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was afraid I should frighten the servants overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit I found the room empty, of course, and the door locked as usual. Then I half dressed and went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate my hysterics to ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Sophomores, consisted of scoring a home-run with the bases congested, on a strike-out; of smashing hurdles and cross-bars on the track; endangering his heedless career with the shot and hammer; and making a ridiculous farce of every event he entered, to the vast hilarity of the students, who, with the exception of Butch Brewster, had no idea his ridiculous efforts were in earnest. In the high-jump, however, Hicks had given considerable promise, which to date the grasshopper ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... off all restraint, and laughed and laughed. After the emperor had laughed hilarity was permissible. Her pleasure was beyond ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... hearty and spirited, but our repertoire was limited. I recall many evenings of blameless hilarity on the benches under the trees in front of East College. For more ambitious musical performance we had our "Mendelssohn Society," whose concerts were not probably so classical as we then esteemed them, but whose rehearsals gave us not a little pleasure. Athletics had hardly ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... passed back among their neighbors and families, and spoke with more seriousness than hitherto. The rifle firing ended, the hilarity lessened that afternoon. In the old times the keel-boatmen bound west started out singing. The pack-train men of the fur trade went shouting and shooting, and the confident hilarity of the Santa Fe wagon caravans was a proverb. But now, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... motion favouring prohibition was introduced in the Canadian parliament there were frequent references to the convivial habits of the members. The seconder of the motion was greeted with loud laughter. He good-naturedly said that he was well aware of the cause of hilarity, but that he was ready to sacrifice his pleasure to the general good. Sir Allan MacNab, the leader of the Opposition, moved a farcical amendment, under which every member was to sign a pledge of abstinence, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile was always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and humor in the expression, as being well calculated to fix a fair lady's eye. His figure, {p.145} excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard, it was cast in the very mould of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and all said it was an excellent champagne, and two or three made a note of it in their pocket-books. And such was their loyal enthusiasm that the banquet ended in a fine glow of something exactly like hilarity. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... that faculty of an honest laugh with him wherever he goes,—why shouldn't he? The "order of things," as he calls it, from which hilarity was excluded, would be crippled and one-sided enough. I don't believe the human gamut will be cheated of a single note after men have done breathing this fatal atmospheric mixture and die ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Road with their waving mantles. On either hand, they disappear down the shaded pathways, which lead off from the main route, conducting to hamlets in the groves, or to the little marine villas upon the beach. There is considerable hilarity; and you would suppose them just from an old-fashioned "hevar," or jolly heathen dance. Those who carry Bibles swing them carelessly from their arms by ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... that a law which every one knew had proved a complete failure should be made a permanent part of the Constitution? And why the ungovernable hilarity over the demand that its "efficiency" should never be impaired? Surely the motive was something other than a desire to recover lost property. Upon the Whig party had been fastened the odium for the enactment of the law, and the act unrepealed meant ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... clothing, cap and moccasins. He held in his long arms a large rifle, a knife in his belt, and a powder horn slung over his side. He seemed the very patriarch of the woods, but good humored, and with his rough hilarity soon ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... partaken of on this melancholy occasion without enthusiasm. Even the punch made out of a teaspoonful of brandy from the bottom of Princess's flask mixed with about a pint of water and two lumps of sugar failed to move us to any hilarity. Our menu did not vary in any particular from that usually provided at the restaurant, though we did feel we might have had ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... hearken to his eloquence when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of breeding, that calm ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... marches, anthems, reels, strathspeys, and all else, out of his wonderful memory. Never, surely was a chamber organ compelled to such service. A little cask of suspicious appearance was smuggled into the cabin from the wagon, and heightens the hilarity a little, I fear. No churlishness could resist Evans's unutterable jollity or the contagion of his hearty laugh. He claps people on the back, shouts at them, will do anything for them, and makes a perpetual breeze. "My kingdom for a horse!" He ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the air of the place with a dampness and a depression that could be felt. And then out of the downward windows of the gate, the watcher's eye always fell on the City of Destruction in the distance, and on her sister cities sitting like her daughters round about her. And that also made mirth and hilarity impossible at that gate. And then the kind of characters who came knocking all hours of the day and the night at that gate. Goodwill never saw a happy face or heard a cheerful voice from one year's end to the other. And when any one so far forgot himself as to put on an untimely ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... of European and other lands—attended on him, filled his pipe, brought him hot coffee, and watched his every movement. They were richly dressed, more richly and gaily, perchance, than they had ever been in the days of freedom, when they had been wont to chat and laugh with careless hilarity. But they were mute enough now. A few of them had tasted the bastinado and been tamed; most of them had been wise enough to tame themselves. If Shakespeare had been a Turk he would probably have written a very different version of the Taming ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... or twice, indeed, I hazarded, through their fathers, some little complimentary observations in Latin; but I cannot say that I found that language lend itself readily to the gallantries of the ball-room. After supper dancing recommenced, and the hilarity of the evening reached its highest pitch when half a dozen sailors, dressed in turbans made of flags (one of them a lady with the face of the tragic muse), came forward and danced the cancan, with a gravity and decorum that would have ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... had fallen so lightly that sometimes the runners cut through slightly; but, all things considered, the sleighing was very good. Still, the driver kept the horses well in hand, for they were good ones and ready to respond to a word. Moreover, the hilarity behind them seemed to have proved infectious, for every now and again a leader or a wheeler would prance about as though joining in the fun, and presently another animal became infected and wanted to prance, too. Had she not, the next chapter need ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... one thing," says ERSKINE, of Cardross, "that equals the hilarity of the opening of a New Session, and that is the joy with which the boys go off on the day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... the utmost hilarity, heightened by the vivacity and good-humour of my associates, to which might be added, the full gratification of my prevailing penchant for the observance of character, we were on the point of departing, when Transit, ever on the alert in search of variety, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... as joyful an evening as the night before had been gloomy. Even the saturnine spirits of Pedro seemed greatly affected by the general hilarity; for his sallow face was all smiles and his little black eyes snapped and twinkled, as he passed hither and thither among the men, and he was very careful to place the pan in which he washed the dishes within easy hearing distance ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... weariness; while the willow wren, with a sudden outbreak of cheerfulness, though not quite sure (it is impossible to describe bird-songs without attributing to the birds human passions and frailties) that he is not doing a silly thing, struggles on to the end of his story with a hesitating hilarity, in feeble imitation of the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity, but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin had removed it, and at a sign from the judge ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... pass signed by a justice of the peace. Travelers were held up over "holy time." Attempts were made to prevent the young people from gathering in companies on Sunday evenings after the Sabbath was legally over. Too much hilarity, though innocent, was condemned. Such restrictions were extremely distasteful to a large minority in the state, and seemed to many citizens only repeated proofs of how closely the government and the Presbyterian-Congregational church were banded together. Accordingly ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... continuance of this engine of avarice, oppression, and fraud in any town, the chiefs cause their great drum and other instruments of music to be continually in action, and every appearance of festive hilarity pervades among the inhabitants, accompanied by the song ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... few social restraints to prevent universal intercourse, familiarizes every class of the community with the peculiarities of each, and forms an outlet for the wit and humor of the whole. This was the stimulant to mirth and hilarity, for which no people are so much distinguished as the Georgians of the middle country. At the especial period of which I now write, her humorists were innumerable. Dooly, Clayton, Prince, Longstreet, Bacon (the Ned Brace of Longstreet's Georgia Scenes), and many others of lesser ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... night was given the Mask Ball in honor of the committee. Nobody knew what conclusion the eminent gentleman had reached in regard to Jim and his associates. But everyone did his best to contribute to the hilarity of the occasion. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... borrow, to pledge an old Waterbury watch, and other financial expedients failed; but the circle was squared when the preacher said, "I'll lie down, and when I have slept sixty cents worth, you send that bed-shaker to rout me out." The procession started for the sleeper amid the hilarity of the passengers, but the tradition is that he slept the whole night through and ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... figure, and all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls; of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied her act of self-surrender just now—that acceptance of his word and renunciation of her own fancy which had put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... a night made us very hot. After the third dance the two old squatters, the horse-buyer, the clergyman, and Mr Benson disappeared. Judging from the hilarity of their demeanour and the killing odour of their breaths when they returned an hour or so later, during their absence they must have conscientiously sampled the contents of every whisky decanter on the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... nodded her thanks, and the handy man bowed with a sweep of his hat naming her aloud for the whole stage to hear. If a look could have blasted Mr. Bat Brydges, he would have been dissolved in gaseous matter from the expression that passed over the face under the sailor hat. She heard the hilarity break bounds inside as she mounted the driver's seat; and felt very much as you have felt when you have come out of the clatter of the orchestra pit where you have chanced to sit next ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... down into the depths of Prather's Mill Road upon the wings of the wind was not at all alarming. On the contrary, it was received by the grimy watchers at the stills with considerable hilarity. To the most of them it merely furnished an excuse for a week's holiday, including trips to both Gullettsville and Villa Ray. Freely interpreted, it ran thus: "Friends and fellow-citizens: this is to inform ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... table. Maria Angelina was astounded at the hilarity of that meal. Already she began censoring her report to Mamma. Certainly Mamma would never understand Ruth's elbows on the table, her shouts of laughter—or the pellets of bread ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... never merge into questionable hilarity. He ought to respect as well as love the woman he hopes to marry. She should equally avoid gushing and tyrannising over him. To see a girl ordering her fiance about, making him fetch and carry like a black boy, and taking his submission as her due, is enough to justify the hope that the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... breakfast ended amid general hilarity, and afterward Grandma took Marjorie up to her own room, and they had a ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the sea or the rivers in winter, as we used to do on the Coral Island; but then I knew from experience that a large washing-tub and a sponge do form a most pleasant substitute. The feelings of freshness, of cleanliness, of vigour, and extreme hilarity, that always followed my bathes in the sea, and even, when in England, my ablutions in the wash-tub, were so delightful that I would sooner have gone without my breakfast than without my bathe in cold water. My readers will forgive me for asking whether they ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a curate read prayers at the prisoners. The curate stood well outside the grating; while all the time from inside loud cries of advice were given and sundry remarks tendered him concerning his personal appearance. The frightful hilarity of the mob saved these wretches from despair. But the curate did his duty: he who has ears to hear let him hear. Waiting in the harbor were ships loading their freight of sin, crime and woe for Botany Bay; at Tyburn every week women were hanged. Three ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... was the hilarity at these monthly meetings, and I think I may say that the talk was interesting and smart. Mr. J.H. Chamberlain was often positively brilliant in his little sallies of speech, whilst Mr. J.T. Bunce would put in dry, sententious words of wit and wisdom. Mr. G.J. Johnson laid down the law with ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... than usual came from the interior, Jem became convulsed, and threatened another explosion of laughter, in spite of Don's severely reproachful looks; but in every case Jem's mirthful looks and his comic ways of trying to suppress his hilarity proved to be too much for Don, who was fain to join in, and they both ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... confusion. Cutshaw's men stood up, seized their muskets, and stood at attention till it was known that the ammunition had been purposely fired and no enemy was threatening the line. Then what laughter and hilarity prevailed, for a while, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... lecturer has ever, as regards rough roads, inclement weather, and amazing votes of thanks, had quite the same joys and sorrows as I have come through. I have often laughed (good-naturedly, I hope) at what came under my notice, but I am not so conceited as to suppose that the hilarity was always on ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... grammar, whereupon my father, when driven into a corner, would reply with imperturbable repose: "My French feeling tells me that it must be thus, thus and not otherwise," a declaration which naturally served but to increase the hilarity. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... read that last one again, some one!" And then, amid redoubled hilarity, the whole effusion ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here and there—a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curving of the neck, a reassuring wag of the tail, a glance toward the coffee-room, and a few frolicsome, kittenish jumps, these last plainly indicating that as for himself the occasion was one of great hilarity, with absolutely no cause in it for anxiety. Then, if you could have seen that anxious look fade away from the face of the strange dog, the responsive, reciprocal wag of the night-club of a tail. If you could have caught the sudden peace that came into ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... morning, warm and bright, with a hint of that soft blue-gray mist on the horizon which in the afternoon would clothe the landscape in an amethyst haze. Auntie Jinit's old gray horse ambled along easily, and Elizabeth gave herself up to hilarity. To go abroad with Mrs. McKerracher was to have one's entertainment insured. She was a highly diverting lady, with a youthful twinkle in her eye contradicting the shining gray hair that, parted demurely in the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... frequently put the lessons of freedom and individual rights they heard so much of into practice, and relieved their brains from the constant strain of argument on first principles, by the wildest hilarity in dancing, all kinds of games, and practical jokes carried beyond all bounds of propriety. These romps generally took place at Mr. Miller's. He used to say facetiously, that they talked a good deal about liberty over the way, but he kept the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... themselves. The army, seeing Hannibal's attendants come back from viewing the enemy in such a laughing condition, concluded that it must be profound contempt of the enemy, that made their general at this moment indulge in such hilarity. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes. They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards them, as I saw them waltzing ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... boast, all within a short period of this writing. Like most Western hotels, it had been ably supported by a large floating population, known as "New York Drummers," and many a time had its old walls re-echoed with their guileless hilarity and moral tales; and, if the ancient and time-honored spittoon in the bar-room could speak, it could relate wonderful stories concerning the Sample Gentry; relating, perhaps, to a Spunkville merchant, who, having retreated precipitately down his cellar stairs ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he'd saved out of his salary.' As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee, ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the patient was eminently handsome, and the removal of his helmet, or more properly, of his morion, had suffered his fair locks to escape in profusion, around a countenance in which the hilarity of youth was qualified by a blush of modesty at once and pleasure. And then the feelings of the younger Countess, when compelled to hold the kerchief to the wound, while her aunt sought in their baggage for some vulnerary remedy, were mingled at once with a sense of delicacy and ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... ministers—Talleyrand for France, Kurakin and Labanoff for Russia, Kalkreuth and Goltz for Prussia; at the latter were sometimes all three of the monarchs, frequently only the two principals, for they found Frederick William a damper on their hilarity. The generals, the staff, and the men of the two great armies which had fought so bravely at Friedland harmonized in mutual respect; but the unwarlike King and his suite, both military and civil, were outsiders. Immediately after the formal and brilliant entry of Alexander into ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Christian to repeat, 'There's one God,'" &c. I was determined to risk an abrupt answer. I said, "This saying is prohibited to Christians." At this stop-mouth answer they burst out into a fit of hilarity. But one fellow, who wished to show some zeal, growled out, "Be off, be off." My good-natured young Touarghee quickly got up from the circle, where he had taken his seat, and smiling, took me by the arm, whispering in my ear, "Come along, Yâkob, these are brutish people." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... of the hilarity incident to the presence at dinner of Jeff and of his guest, Mr. Lawrence, Miss Jemima had pushed her inquisition even further than usual. George Washington watched her with growing suspicion, his head thrown back and his eyes half closed, and so, when, ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... ye take me for? And all these years you've known me! Only the idea of it!—to tell a young child that story! Why—what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what I say!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:—"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... clouds of the West. We are only a thousand miles away from the solid, sugary sweet, redolent, ripe American soil, and if there is anything the matter we do not mind, why we will just take a boat and pull ashore." But we would have had a hard time if the Captain had taken us up in the flush of the hilarity that laughed at a thousand miles, when the breeze brought us the faint first hints that we were almost home, after a voyage of five thousand leagues. The wind shifted to the south and increased until it roared, and the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... him. In the darkened chamber, with its peculiar, musty odors, the boys did not feel in the mood for hilarity or even for speech. There was something about their situation that seemed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... hope—and eventually without the desire—of anything better. The church formed, to be sure, a means of social intercourse; but according to prevailing religious notions the churchyard was not the place nor the Sabbath the time for that healthy but unrestrained hilarity which is essential to ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... intervals of hilarity, was inaugurated in the library, and by midnight it showed no signs of abating. At this hour the original four occupied the table for the second time, and endurance has its limits. The atmosphere of Liberty Hall that prevailed made Honora's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to taste his mettle. He had me twice before I could get clear, and I seem to feel it as I write. One by one the luckless and dripping Philosophers ran the gauntlet of that fatal debarkation, which was by no means alleviated by the opprobrious hilarity of our two castigators and the delighted ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... unknown plant, moss, bird, or stone, and conjecturing their names and qualities. A little clamouring below, as to who was to blow a great shell that Benjie had taught them how to use, prepared us two idle ones for the summons to breakfast, of which we all partook with great hilarity and content, the grumblings for want of milk, having ceased partly because they were not attended to, and partly because all the grumbling in the world obtained none. After breakfast, I settled with Jenny the difficult question of dinner, which generally ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... bent on displaying his note and commiserating his unsuccessful rivals, only to discover that each had a contract for all he could do, and that each had been actually bidding against nobody but himself. Great was the hilarity which covered their chagrin when they met and compared notes and looked into each others' faces. However, all were happy and satisfied. But it may be said in passing that these amiable gentlemen all united subsequently in one company, which ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... servant, within Monsieur's own house, suffered joy to pass the limits of discretion, and enter the confines of noise and inebriety, especially as Monsieur had so positively interdicted all outward sign of extra hilarity. He implored mille pardons for ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ice king, the snow; Around them let mirth and hilarity flow, Hurrah for our Governor, country, and main, And God bless our loved Queen, and long ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... repeated by all the mirrors, so that the effect was almost dazzling. The grand suite of salons was thronged with masques, in every conceivable costume. There was not a single room deserted. Everyplace was animated with music voices, brilliant colors, flashing jewels, the hilarity of extemporized comedy, and all the spirited incidents of a cleverly sustained masquerade. I had never seen before anything in the least comparable to this magnificent fete. I moved along, indolently, in my domino and mask, loitering, now and then, to enjoy ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was usually a quarter column in the evening papers: "HILARITY—Tono-Bungay. Like Mountain Air in the Veins." The penetrating trio of questions: "Are you bored with your Business? Are you bored with your Dinner. Are you bored with your Wife?"—that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both these we had in our first campaign when we worked London ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... at the Harp, yesterday, was composed of many delicacies of the season, including bread-and-cheese and onions. The hilarity of the evening was highly increased by the admirable style in which Signor Jonesi sang ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the romance is rigorously close to things. The author is so engrossed with the objects before his mind, is so thoroughly in earnest, that he has fewer of those humorous caprices of expression in which formerly he was wont to wanton. Some of the old hilarity and play of fancy is gone, but we hardly miss it in our admiration of the effects produced by his almost stern devotion to the main idea of his work. There are passages of description and narrative in which we are hardly conscious of the words, in our clear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... a coyote 'fore he marries that girl. She come all the way from Topeka, Kansas, thinking she was goin' to find a respectable home, and when she come out hyear and found the place was a dance-hall, she cried all the time. She didn't add none to the hilarity of the place. An' one day Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like a freshet and wishin' she was dead, he inquired the cause. She told him how that old harpy wrote her, an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he 'lowed ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... that the girls would not discover how she had wasted the time! Lunch was a scramble meal to-day, served in the morning-room on three different tables, and in the midst of a medley of boxes and parcels; but that was part of the fun of the occasion, and added to the general hilarity. A formal meal in the dining-room could be had any day, but it needed a convulsion of Nature to induce Mrs Rendell to hold her plate in her lap, and actually—oh, horrors! to help herself to butter with her own individual ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security with which we look round upon the comfortable chamber and the scene of domestic hilarity? ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... boundless gaiety and utter despondency, see Griesinger, op. cit., Bk. III. ch. i. and ii. The relation of pessimism to pathological conditions is familiar enough; less familiar is the relation of unrestrained optimism. Yet Griesinger writes that among the insane "boundless hilarity," with "a feeling of good fortune," and a general contentment with everything, is as frequent as depression and repining (see especially p. 281, also ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... his staff of generals, from which he returned in a very excited state to the waiting captain. But, with his extraordinary capacity for shaking off what was unpleasant and for changing his moods, he now beamed with hilarity. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... their faces, and the burly form of John Garvestad was seen sprawling helplessly in the horse-trough. But then—then they realized it with a vengeance. And a laugh went up—a veritable storm of laughter—which swept through the entire crowd and re-echoed with a ghostly hilarity from the mountains. John Garvestad in the meanwhile had managed to pick himself out of the horse-trough, and while he stood snorting, spitting, and dripping, Captain Carstens and his son politely ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... secured two of the horses, upon which they fled at top speed. In turn they were immediately pursued by a detachment of the Indians, mounted upon their fleetest horses; and suffered the humiliation of recapture two days later. Indulging in wild hilarity over the capture of the crestfallen whites, the Indians took a bell from one of the horses and, fastening it about Boone's neck, compelled him under the threat of brandished tomahawks to caper about and jingle the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... At last the hilarity became so boisterous that her curiosity got the better of her, and slipping on a wrapper she opened the window and crept out on to ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... meets a young man at a social feast, garlands itself with the graces of hospitality, sparkles in the brilliant jewels of fashion, smiles through the faces of female beauty, furnishes inspiration for the dance and mingles with music, mirth and hilarity. Gently it takes the young man by the hand, leads him down the green, flowery sward of license, filled with the rich aroma of the wild flowers of life. When it has firmly fixed itself in his appetite, it begins to strip him of his manhood as hail strips the trees, and when, with will-power gone, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... missing, and his shirt, so much of it as was visible, might possibly have made patches for a rifle, but was of no particular value as an article of dress. But such little incidents only served to increase the general hilarity of triumph. The meeting was reconstructed, the resolutions passed, and they wound off with a Harrison song—in fact, with two or three. It was near midnight before the walls of the Masonic Hall ceased to echo to such ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... happiness,—our joyous nights together at Watier's, Kinnaird's, &c. and "that d——d supper of Rancliffe's which ought to have been a dinner,"—all was passed rapidly in review between us, and with a flow of humour and hilarity, on his side, of which it would have been difficult, even for persons far graver than I can pretend to be, not to have caught ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the amusements of Jaffa, and you will notice that they do not exactly make for hilarity. A few miles away to the south were the Jewish colonies at Richon and Duran, whose inhabitants were extremely hospitable, and any troops quartered there subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem were assured of a warm welcome. At the former there was a considerable vine-growing ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... hundred yards with difficulty, when we were compelled to unpack the horses and take the provisions on our backs. Usually the men had kept in the best of spirits, but here, for a few moments, there was silence. When the packs were ready to be strung upon their backs, however, the hilarity and good feeling again commenced. Made the head of Bear Valley, a distance of fifteen miles. We met in the valley, about three miles below the camp, Messrs. Glover and Rhodes, belonging to the party that went to the lake. They informed me they had started with twenty-one ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... remembered Matty's blushes and affected giggles and simpers. He conjured up the whole scene, and when he recalled poor Mrs. Bell's frantic efforts to get the white boat away from the green, his sense of hilarity doubled. Finally he thought of his walk home, of the meditations which had occupied his mind, and last of all of the girl in the gray dress who had put her arms round his neck, laid her head on his breast, and whose lips he had passionately kissed. That head! He felt a thrill now as he remembered ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the dishes, with the tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her. But no Rand appeared. Presently she began to laugh quietly to herself. This occurred several times during her occupation, which was somewhat prolonged. The result of this meditative hilarity was summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked slowly back to the cabin: "I do believe I'm the first woman that ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Podsnaps, and Prigs Of Britain play up some preposterous rigs, And tax e'en cosmopolite charity. But here is a business that's not to be borne; Its mead is the flail and the vial of scorn, Not chaffing or Christmas hilarity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... humor among the green men of Mars are widely at variance with our conceptions of incitants to merriment. The death agonies of a fellow being are, to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest hilarity, while their chief form of commonest amusement is to inflict death on their prisoners of war in various ingenious and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to do as she advised him. The family now sat down to breakfast, after which they all went to church, where the doctor performed divine service. A large party of friends and neighbors returned with them to dinner, and the remainder of the day was spent in hilarity and ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... to go to the barn his head sank on his breast, his steps lagged. He wore again the expression of gloomy thought. A new fear arose in Carlen's breast. Was he mad? Had the wild hilarity of his speech and demeanor in the evening been merely a new phase of disorder in an unsettled brain? Even in this was a strange, sad comfort to Carlen. She would rather have him mad, with alternations of insane joy and gloom, than know that he belonged to another. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... quite improper. As our time was usually taken up with school through the day, and with such chores as feeding cattle and bringing wood in for the fire when we returned at night, we would sally out after supper, on moonlight nights, and, full of life and hilarity, fly over the ice, singing and shouting, and making the night ring with our merriment. There was plenty of room on the bay, and early in the season there were miles of ice, smooth as glass and clear ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... caused the moon to rise over their city every night even out of his season. And friends and relatives gave themselves up to joy and merriment with happy hearts. Eat, feed, give, make merry, sing, drink—these were the sounds heard everyday in every house. And here and there arose loud uproars of hilarity mixed with clappings of hands which filled the whole city of the Daityas, who being capable of assuming any form at will, were engaged in every kind of amusement and sport and scarcely noticed the flight of time, even regarding a whole year as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... life and hilarity. Fun and frolic were the order of the day. There were several horse fanciers on board, with whom he was acquainted, and he got into a conversation with them, his spirits rising ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... resumed her former station. The indissoluble knot was tied: they sat down to the wedding feast, and mirth and hilarity danced ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... midst of the general hilarity produced throughout the house by my friend's speech, I myself have been greatly solemnized by being made (as you have witnessed) the public custodian of his New Testament. (Laughter). At first I shared ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... funeral Sand had a quarrel about Dittmar with one of his former friends, who had passed over from the Burschen to the Landmannschaft, and who had made himself conspicuous at the time of the funeral by his indecent hilarity. It was decided that they should fight the next day, and on the same day ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his listener's overwhelming hilarity. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... serious in his decision to cater to women's needs when he knew so little about them. His friends, too, were intensely amused, and took no pains to hide their amusement from him. They knew him to be the very opposite of "a lady's man," and when they were not convulsed with hilarity they were incredulous ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... timid Nero. And that alarm was increased by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus. During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as "governor of the feast," and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests. To the others he issued trivial mandates which would ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... and face, heavy overhanging eyebrows, his eyes small, deep-set, and fierce,—his appearance furnished an excellent index to his character. Firm, courageous, by no means wanting in intellect or executive ability, he was sensual, gross, and cruel. Though often full of hilarity and hearty animal spirits, there was ever hanging over him a cloud of melancholy, which occasionally settled on him with such weight as to rob him wholly of his reason. At such times he seemed transformed into some fierce monster with an insatiable thirst for blood. When a mere boy ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... confidence. The sailors, however, deemed it prudent to get possession of their arms again as soon as possible; and after explaining as well as they could by signs that their home was only at a short distance, the whole band started off for the ship. The natives were in a most uproarious state of hilarity, and danced and yelled as they ambled along in their hairy dresses, evidently filled with delight at the prospect of forming a friendship with the white strangers, as they afterwards termed the crew of the Dolphin, although some of the said crew were, from ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with him that evening, and Mary was told the occasion merited the best menu she could provide. The young folks arrived without any idea of receiving more than a good dinner and the pleasure of mingling with the cordial, kindly household at the farm; but the general air of hilarity and good fellowship pervading the family circle this evening inspired the guests with like enthusiasm, and no party could be merrier than the one that did full justice ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... "Lord Mount Dunstan and I are genuinely interested—genuinely. He, because he knows New York a little, and I because I don't. I am an elderly man, and have spent my life buried in my books in drowsy villages. Pray go on. Your American slang has frequently a delightful meaning—a fantastic hilarity, or common sense, or philosophy, hidden in its origin. In that it generally differs from English slang, which—I regret to say—is usually founded on some silly catch word. Pray go on. When you see a new book by Mr. Kipling, you are ready to 'separate yourself from one fifty' ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... turned by the Robec river, near the church of St. Maclou, will not be easily forgotten. Thus you see of what various, strange, and striking objects the city of Rouen is composed. Bustle, noise, life and activity, in the midst of an atmosphere unsullied by the fumes of sea coal:—hilarity and apparent contentment:—the spruce bourgeoise and the slattern fille de chambre:—attired in vestments of deep crimson and dark blue—every thing flits before you as if touched by magic, and as if sorrow and misfortune were unknown ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides, apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all the innocent hilarity of his youth which he ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... humorous contortions after every cut—for Parrot was weirdly and wonderfully gymnastic under punishment—and Jacker hugged himself and kicked ecstatically, and young Haddon bowed his forehead in the dirt and drummed with his toes, and gave expression to his exuberant hilarity in frantic pantomime. The rough and ready schoolboy is very near to the beginnings; his sense of humour has not been impaired by over-refinement, but remains somewhat akin to that of the gentle savage; and although his disposition to laugh at the misfortunes of his best friends may be ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... comparative sleekness, cleaned his mane and tail of the accumulated burrs of many autumns, and made quite a gay nag of him. The wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would scarcely know his once familiar vehicle ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ascension; in Phaedrus, teaching that "beauty is the most lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and shedding desire and confidence through the universe, wherever it enters; and it enters, in some degree, into all things; but that there is another, which is as much more beautiful than beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, wisdom, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the chaff and dross of vulgar jests, puns, scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags," allowing no time for chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which are singly feeble combine to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity when huddled upon us with such "impossible conveyance." This vivida vis animi can hardly be reproduced in a translation, and disappears altogether in an attempt at an abstract enumeration of the poet's inexhaustible devices for comic effect. He himself repeatedly boasts ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I could not detect a trace of his recent serious discomposure. I am well persuaded, however, that he had not forgotten it, as that the cause of it was known among the negroes; I thought I observed evidences of it in their looks and deportment, even amid the general hilarity. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The hilarity of the Harmony rooters increased when Oldsmith, right halfback, crashed through left tackle for a gain of 8 yards, dragging a couple of Chester tacklers with him. Hutchings plunged straight ahead for 6 yards more, and the ball was then on Chester's ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... no means so calm, however, when the intelligence of the capitulation first reached him at Madrid. On the contrary, his oldest courtiers had never seen him exhibit such marks of hilarity. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of cups and glasses; till the proudest adjoining tenant without friends on his own side of the partition might have been tempted to wish for entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to know the cause of these fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the guests were really so numerous, and the observations so very amusing as ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... girls chuckled at this. But the occasion and the dispute itself were too serious to engender much hilarity. The question of the new shell was exhaustively discussed, and it was finally decided that a subscription paper be drawn and presented to the parents and friends of Central High, and a sufficient sum be raised immediately, if possible, to pay ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... engaged in what struck him as particularly stupid badinage, he sauntered toward the billiard-room, struggling with a feeling of irritation. He was generally good-humored and tolerant rather than hypercritical, but the somewhat senseless hilarity of Marple's guests was beginning to jar on him. A burst of laughter which he thought had been provoked by one of Bella's sallies followed him down the corridor, but when he quietly opened the door the billiard-room ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... its wealth. The effect of this upon the people was strikingly portrayed in their countenances. Instead of the depressed and gloomy looks seen on the desolated plains belonging to the Pasha of Damascus, health and hilarity everywhere prevailed. Under a wise and beneficent government, the produce of the Holy Land, it is asserted, would exceed all calculation. Its perennial harvests, the salubrity of its air, its limpid springs, its rivers, lakes, plains, hills, and vales, added ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... till the next day, I got out my lamp, which I found to be empty, the napkin having sucked up all the oil. This made me laugh, for as the napkin might very well have caught and set the room on fire, the idea of the confusion which would have ensued excited my hilarity. I imparted the cause of my mirth to my companion, who laughed himself, and then, lighting the lamp, we spent the night in pleasant talk. The history of his imprisonment was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
